The following interview between Kurt Squire and Greg LoPiccolo of
Harmonix Games (on June 22, 2010) tries to get at how Harmonix thinks
about designing games to elicit particularly musical experiences.
Harmonix, developers of FreQuency, Amplitude, Karaoke
Revolution, Guitar Hero I and II, and now
the Rock Band series, is known for its pioneering work
in rhythm action games, taking them from a niche genre to broad
mainstream success. Sarah Chu, who transcribed and cleaned up the
transcripts, contributed interview questions as well.
Kurt Squire: Can you talk a little bit about the game design
philosophy at Harmonix and a little about how you think about game
design?
Greg LoPiccolo: Well, the company charter from day one was to
use technology to provide nonmusicians with the tremendous experience of
creating music. Most of the people here are musicians or frustrated
musicians or some version of that. There’s a strong consensus here
that if you have proi ciency in an instrument, performing music is one of
the great joys in life. It is enormously fun and rewarding, but this
experience is denied to most people because the learning curve is so steep.
It really requires multiple years of focus, dedication, and time to get good
enough on a traditional instrument to really express yourself. So, broadly
conceived, the ambition here has always been to try to use technology to
bring more people into that experience. Harmonix was not originally
games-specii c. It wasn’t until maybe about four or five years ago that we
realized that games are an appropriate platform to bring this vision to
life.